Do you often wonder how you drifted into this job, relationship, life? Well, it’s time to tune in and set your goals!

Football manager Jose Mourinho once said “For me the most important thing in my life is love …  if you are not in love with your job, you must change your job”.  The Special One is perhaps exempt from the misery of the mortgage trap, the fear of not finding future employment or the horrible, grey flatness of not knowing what you want to do.

Trouble is most people do “drift” into roles through circumstance, indecision or sheer “it seemed a good idea at the time” cluelessness.  Making do, settling and putting up with is what many have to endure on a daily basis while others, it seems, slipstream into dream jobs and great lives filled with passion and purpose.

The Harvard Business school famously conducted research into students who planned goals for their life; time-lined them and set out a strategy for achieving them and compared them with those who decided to “go with the flow”.

Years later the latter category reportedly had a higher level of depression, career dissatisfaction and divorce than those who had grasped the rudder, aimed high and knew what they wanted. That tiny 3% of the class who had written goal downs and had created a plan to get them were earning 10 times more and happier lives and relationships than the entire 97% of class. Wowser, right?

So how can you steer your rudderless ship in a direction that feels meaningful when you haven’t a clue where you want to go and how to get there? Sometimes our dreams are squashed by well-meaning parents who want security for their offspring and playing safe often means not playing at all.  Sometimes we talk ourselves out of our true calling by ignoring our desires or the little whispers that rise up as folly that would never bring in the lolly or love.

In short, it takes self-knowledge and courage to trust in yourself and to follow your dreams.  It’s not for everyone and there are no guarantees but know this – dream manifestation, adventure and a life lived without regrets is what happens when you make the leap. Sound good?

Fear of failure – you’re not alone!

Einstein didn’t speak until he was four, didn’t read until he was seven and was considered “mentally slow” forever adrift in “foolish dreams”.  Michael Jordan was dropped from his high school basketball team. He said “I’ve failed over and over in my life that is why I succeed.”

Walt Disney was fired as a newspaper editor because “he lacked imagination and had no good ideas” and was bankrupt several times before he got Disneyland off the ground. A good friend wallpapered her whole hallway with rejection letters before a publisher said “yes”.

You don’t even have to be gifted.  But you do have to have self-belief, a strong nerve and a deaf ear to nay sayers.  So every morning you have two choices – to leave your dreams on your pillow or wake up and chase them.  Or at the very least tiptoe towards them.

Here are a few tips to get you from floor to soar:

• Write a list of everything you don’t want (that’s the easy bit)
• Now write the longest list you can come up with of things you love, are drawn to excel at, align with your values and just feel great to you.
• Write out any obstacles you feel are keeping you stuck. Limiting beliefs such as “I will probably fail”, “people won’t like me if I am successful”, “it will take too long” or “it’s a flooded market”, “I will never find love/be slim/feel fit”

Now flip the script and write the polar opposite  i.e. “People will love what I do”, “I will work hard until I succeed”.  “I will love the journey”, “I can be healthy and fit”, “I deserve love”

• Make a list of action steps and take on board one of them each day.
• Creating a vision board of all you want to have in your life will set the intention.
• Be realistic as you plan the steps. Things take longer than you think. So be patient.
• Build in fun so the journey is as wild and wonderful as the destination.

Get that there is a never a right time to start (least of all New Year’s Day when you’re feeling toxic and the skies are grey) so take action now.

And finally true courage is having the belief that something will be yours even if you can’t yet see it.  Some might say you have to see it to believe it but as a coach I can assure you real magic happens when you truly believe it – you will, indeed, start to see it.

Onwards and good luck.

For more free coaching tips sign up to Carole Ann’s newsletter www.realcoachingco.com[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Life coach, author and columnist Carole Ann Rice has been one of the UK’s leading life coaches for 18 years.  She is a published author of two books Find Your Dream Job and Start Your Dream Business.  As the only coach in the UK to have a column in a national daily paper her Happy Monday column ran weekly in the Daily Express for 7 years and she won the Best Coach Award in the Best Business Women’s Awards in 2017.

Corporate clients include the London School of Economics and the National Children’s Bureau, Sports England and McCann Erickson.

Regularly featured in the press – The Daily Mail, Metro News, The Times, Woman and Home, Glamour and Grazia she was also featured in SKY BSB’s 6-part series “Who’d Be A Billionaire?”

She coaches high end clients and CEO’s, students and supermodels, scientists and start ups and anyone looking to reach their potential and to live with passion and purpose in all things they do.

She is MD of the Pure Coaching Academy  (accredited by the IAPCM)  for 8 years where she trains amazing people to become world class life coaches.

She is an inspirational and fun public speaker who uses wit, wisdom and a bit of magic to create astonishing transformations.